ABC News team hurt by bomb in Iraq

Anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were riding in an Iraqi army vehicle.

January 30, 2006|By Matea Gold and Solomon Moore, Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman were seriously injured Sunday when the Iraqi army vehicle they were traveling in was hit by a roadside bomb.

Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were traveling with an Iraqi unit attached to the U.S. 4th Infantry Division near Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, when the attack occurred, ABC News President David Westin said in a statement.

Although both men were wearing full body armor and Kevlar helmets, they were standing up in a rooftop hatch of an Iraqi army personnel carrier at the time of the explosion and received serious injuries, including shrapnel wounds to the head. Helicopters flew them to a U.S. military hospital in Balad.

ABC said the two men were in stable condition after surgery. "We take this as good news, but the next few days will be critical," Westin said, adding that the military planned to evacuate the journalists to medical facilities in Landstuhl, Germany.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said one Iraqi soldier was also wounded in the attack about 12:25 p.m. Officials did not provide information on the nature and extent of his injuries.

Woodruff, 44, was named co-anchor of ABC's World News Tonight along with Elizabeth Vargas last month to replace the late anchor Peter Jennings, who died of lung cancer in August. Since then, Woodruff has spent much of his time reporting from international hot spots such as Tehran and Jerusalem. He and Vogt arrived in Iraq on Friday after spending two days in Israel covering the Palestinian elections and had planned to be there through Tuesday.

They were traveling Sunday with the 4th Infantry Division in an armored Humvee, but then they decided to switch to an Iraqi vehicle, ABC's senior White House correspondent, Martha Raddatz, told George Stephanopoulos on the network's This Week Sunday morning, according to a transcript released by the network.

Iraqi forces have borne the brunt of insurgent attacks and often lack sufficient armor plating to protect them. More than 4,000 Iraqi police and soldiers have been killed since March 2003.

The two journalists were in the first of a group of vehicles, Raddatz said. The explosion was followed by small-arms fire, she said.

The Taji area, a flat agricultural region that is also home to a gas refinery, has been the scene of several insurgent attacks in recent months, including the downing of a U.S. helicopter and the hijacking of a busload of 31 would-be Iraqi police recruits two weeks ago. The recruits had failed to pass muster and were on their way home when insurgents kidnapped the men and shot them to death execution-style.

On Thursday, an Iraqi cameraman for Baghdad TV, Mahmoud Zaal, was killed in Ramadi during a firefight between U.S. forces and insurgents, witnesses said.

Since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, 37 journalists have been abducted in Iraq and 61 have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Raddatz said Woodruff and Vogt were experienced journalists who were careful while traveling in Iraq.

"I have worked with Doug Vogt so many times. He is no hot dog," she said. She added that Woodruff was not a risk-taker.

Woodruff grew up in the Detroit area and attended Colgate University and the University of Michigan law school before taking a corporate-law job in New York.

Along the way, he also learned Chinese, and he decided to spend part of 1989 in Beijing teaching law. When the Tiananmen Square uprising began, he got involved, signing on as a translator for CBS News anchor Dan Rather.

"When I realized there was a job that existed in this world where I could be in the middle of huge world events and actually get paid for it, it was an epiphany for me," Woodruff told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

He chose to forgo a legal career for a $12,000-a-year TV job in 1991, shortly before the birth of the first of his four children. He started at local stations and moved from California to Virginia to Arizona before he was hired by ABC News in 1996.

Woodruff covered the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, but his goal was to be a foreign correspondent.

ABC News sent him to cover the bombing of Yugoslavia. He went to Afghanistan when the United States attacked after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings and, last year, he filed a series of high-profile reports from inside North Korea.

He and his wife, Lee, a freelance journalist, have four children, ages 5 to 14.

Vogt, 46, has worked for ABC News for more than 15 years, covering major events in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He was born in Alberta, Canada, and now resides in Aix-en-Provence, France, with his wife, Vivian, and their three daughters.